On 19th July, the first annual report on the progress of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was launched as part of the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) at the United Nations headquarters in New York. The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2016 is designed to set the benchmark for the next 15 years over which the goals will be implemented by evaluating where the world stands now against them.

Although agricultural development will have an impact on every one ofthe 17 SDGs, it is nowhere more evident than in SDG 2, which aims to “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.” So where do we currently stand against this goal?

Nearly 800 million people are still hungry

Despite progress made under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), more than 790 million people around the world still suffer from hunger. According to the report, at the start of the new millennium 15% of people in the world were undernourished, and by 2015 this proportion was down to 11%. Although this is certainly progress, there is still a long way to go. Experiences from the MDGs indicate that, where countries failed to reach their target for reducing hunger, it was predominantly due to natural or human-induced disasters, and political instability. With a rising global population and a changing climate, resources such as land and water are likely to become increasingly limited, exacerbating these risk factors. This could destabilise progress towards SDG2, particularly in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa where, according to the report, more than 50% of the adult population face moderate or severe levels of food insecurity. [Read more…]

Subscribe

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 29,994 other followers

Connect

Search this site

One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World?

Select a chapter of the book

Select a chapter of the book

Read about the key messages of the book in our Policy Briefing Paper

Read the key facts and figures briefing paper

About this site

This blog is run by Agriculture for Impact (A4I), an independent advocacy initiative led by Professor Sir Gordon Conway, author of the book One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World?

A4I aims to enable better European government support for productive, sustainable, equitable and resilient agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing in particular on the needs of smallholder farmers.

Agriculture for Impact also convenes the Montpellier Panel, a group of European and African experts in the fields of agriculture, trade, ecology and global development.

It is based at Imperial College London and is supported through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation